The Concorde... Airport '79

Fourth and final entry in the series that began in 1970. That first film helped kickstart the all-star big budget disaster trend in 70's cinema, and this final outing helps just as much at putting the final nails in the genre's coffin. Of course "Airplane" the following year would make fun of the entire previous decade's worth of disaster films.

Alain Delon gets top billing as the captain of the title craft. With Susan Blakely and John Davidson as reporters, Robert Wagner as a crooked arms dealer, Sylvia Kristel as the head stewardess, Eddie Albert as the airline owner, Sybil Danning as his trophy wife, Avery Schreiber as a Soviet Olympic coach with a deaf daughter, Andrea Marcovicci as the oldest Russian Olympic gymnast ever, Mercedes McCambridge as her busybody chaperone, Cicely Tyson as a mother to a child desperately in need of a heart transplant, Nicolas Coaster as the doctor to perform it, David Warner as the dieting flight engineer, Bibi Andersson as a prostitute, Jimmie Walker as a pot-smoking sax player, Charo as Margarita and Martha Raye as the woman who can't stay out of the bathroom (no, really).

George Kennedy costars as Patroni, the only character to appear in all four films. This time he has a larger part as co-pilot of the title passenger jet, on route from the US to Paris, as Wagner's evil arms dealer hatches numerous inept plans to bring down the craft and destroy incriminating evidence. The dialogue is trite and banal as usual, and the various relationships and mini-dramas amongst the bloated cast never rise above the mundane.

Keep your eyes open for an early appearance by Ed Begley Jr as Rescuer #1. Like many films of the era, the studio also cut together an extended version for TV broadcasts that added even more subplots and characters, played by the likes of Jose Ferrer, J.D. Cannon and Alan Fudge, but the version I watched was the original.

All the entries in the 70's disaster movie franchise "Airport" – a total of four movies spread over one decade – have been chastised by critics as well as regular action movie fanatics for being too grotesque and ludicrous. Me, personally, I liked the three previous installments a lot, but I can't but admit that the swan song in the series is a completely laughable effort. The supposedly adrenalin-rushing script is absurd, the stereotypical characters are cartoonish, the acting performances are wooden and the action sequences are downright hilarious. The set-up and plot of "The Concorde" is faithful to the previous movies. We have a cast full of acclaimed names, often in inferior little roles, and a screenplay that brings together pretty much everything that can go wrong on an intercontinental flight. The prestigious Concorde aircraft is ready to fly from New York to Paris and then onwards towards Moscow in celebration of the 1980 Olympics. One of the passengers is the female journalist Maggie Whelan, who's in possession of some important evidence that will unmask her ex-fiancée Kevin Harrison as an illegal weapon dealer. It's most vital for him that Maggie never reaches Moscow and thus he tries to kill her, as well as the rest of the Concorde passengers and crew, subsequently through nuclear missiles and sabotage. Luckily for the passengers, the Concorde has two of the world's biggest macho men behind the steering wheel with the French Captain Paul Metrand and the American veteran pilot Joe Patroni. "The Concorde: Airport 79" is a dumb and fairly pathetic film, but fortunately enough it remains amusing and never bores for one second. The sight of an hi-tech advanced airplane making loops in order to evade missiles is definitely bad in an entertaining way and the hammy performances of A-list stars are fun to observe as well. Particularly Robert Wagner is tremendous as the villain. With his straight face and eloquent monologues, he represents the prototype of Bond-movie villains and I strongly suspect that Mike Myers hired him to play Number Two in the Austin Powers' movie solely based on his performance here. Alain Delon looks quite bored and soft-erotica star Sylvia "Emmanuelle" Kristel is rather unnoticeable when she keeps her clothes on. Fun bloke George Kennedy is the only actor who appeared in all four of the "Airport" movies, so it's truly a shame that he plays his biggest role in the worst of the series. The dialogs are lame and some of the clichéd sub plots are horrendous (does there really have to be an emergency donor organ transport in every disaster movie?), but I certainly didn't regret the two hours of my life that I wasted on watching this film.

In the beginning, there was "Airport", an A-list, ultra-slick adaptation of a best-selling book, nominated for multiple Oscars (including Best Picture!) Then came "Airport 1975" with too much humor (intentional and unintentional) and Karen Black flying a damaged 747. "Airport '77" had a private plane sinking beneath the ocean while rich passengers dropped like flies. In an inane attempt to continue the exploitation of the original film (and cash in on the notoriety of the then-new Concorde, the fastest commercial plane ever), this film came along and ended the series for good. A year later, "Airplane!" would slam the coffin lid and seal it with it's hysterical sending up of the many clichés of the air-disaster genre. Here, Wagner is a high-powered industrialist who's been selling arms to enemies of the U.S. When his reporter mistress Blakely is informed of this, he tries kill her. After she boards the Concorde en route to Moscow, he (ludicrously) decides to pull out every stop in the book to demolish the aircraft, even though it is full of Olympians, TV journalists, music legends, human organs and little old ladies who can't stay out of the bathroom! The entire film is both stagnant and simultaneously uproarious at the same time. The director, writer, editor and the actors can't seem to get ANYTHING right! (See Blakely's ridiculously unconvincing newscast in which she never once looks into the camera and in which clips from events AS THEY ARE HAPPENING IN REAL TIME parade across the screen.) It also contains some of the most abominable blue-screen and model special effects ever to be seen in a major studio film. The cast of the film is huge and full of names, though most of them are given, literally, nothing to do but embarrass themselves. Wagner looks very tired and hardly bothers to vary his facial expressions. Blakely works hard but is defeated by the stupidity of the character and the script. Kennedy (the one actor who was in all four films) is promoted to Captain this time, but is reduced to cracking crude sexual jokes and (in the film's most celebratedly lunatic scene) cracking open the cockpit window and shooting off a flare! Haggard, former screen-god Delon as another pilot tries to beat preposterous dialogue like, "Your hair is my french fries" in his affair with sex kitten stewardess Kristel (whose calf-length uniform has a split up to her thigh!) Other oddities include McCambridge spouting a dreadful Russian accent and flouncing around in curtain-like tops as a gymnastics coach, Walker as a pot-smoking sax player, Lewis as a jazz legend (!) who feels she may be losing it, Schreiber as a Russian coach with a deaf daughter (at least she can't hear Lewis singing!) and Raye as a grandma with a bladder control problem (first dentures and now this?! What? Did June Allyson turn the part down?) Special mention must be given to the side-splitting appearance of Tyson as a mother escorting (!) a frozen heart to her dying son. (Since when do parents go off and collect organs while their kid is expiring somewhere else??) In an apparent attempt to disappear from this rancid film, she hides her face under every imaginable object. Already buried under Victoria Principal's fright wig from "Earthquake", she uses hankies, a clutch purse, blankets, ANYTHING to obscure her face from being seen, eventually turning away from the camera entirely! The endless cast list also contains Albert as the airline owner and Danning as his trophy wife, Davidson as a reporter, Charo as a pushy passenger attempting to stowaway a Chihuahua and Marcovicci who gets another special mention. Unbelievably, she plays a 24 year-old gymnast (!) going for her third gold medal, which is crazy enough except that she was 31 in real life! Just one more nutty aspect of this thoroughly retarded film. Perhaps the most bizarre of all is the fact that the plane goes through several traumas, spinning violently and nearly crashing, yet after a layover in Paris, virtually every single passenger GETS BACK ON! As if things weren't bad enough, the Olympics that were pushed so heavily in this movie wound up being boycotted that year by the U.S., so the whole film was outdated before it was even released anyway! Good for a few laughs, but worthless as drama.

I remember walking out of an Australian movie theatre in 1980 and saying to my brother..."That was a disaster movie but what was the disaster?". Granted, I was a child at the time.

This Airport movie is different to the other three, no big sea dive or big collision, Airport '79 just seemed to be all over the place! However, the film has improved with age and two recent viewings have been very much enjoyed. It has a touch of The Towering Inferno (1974) with Robert Wagner still being up to no good, the miniature effects work of the Concorde itself is pleasing to my eyes and the film starts with a very uplifting Lalo Schifrin theme tune.

Perhaps Schifrin was trying to be the new disaster movie composer as in 1980 he would score Irwin Allen's When Time Ran Out as well.

There was to be a 5th Airport movie but the poor box office takings for Airport '79 put an end to all that. Too bad as all four Airport films are a special part of the 1970s and still survive repeat viewings to this day.

CONCORDE: AIRPORT '79, THE (1979) **½ Alain Delon, Susan Blakely, Robert Wagner, Sylvia Kristel, George Kennedy. This fourth and final entry in the Airport series is arguably the weakest of the bunch, but it doesn't deserve the critical thrashing it's received over the years. True, the script is rife with hokey, often saccharine dialog (in one nauseating scene, a television reporter (John Davidson) and his Russian gymnast girlfriend recite wedding vows to each other when they think the plane is going down), and leaves far too many unresolved subplots (thanks mostly to the use of a huge ensemble cast of Hollywood has-beens, a series trademark). But Airport fans won't care, because the action is what matters and on that score, at least, The Concorde delivers. Even with its dated special effects, the movie still packs a wallop, delivering plenty of nail-biting suspense and a spectacular ending. Worth seeing.